/ forecast / errors /
image may contain palm trees sky clouds forecast errors
image ocean open eye of a five-category hurricane
may be twelve hours of a monstrous burgeoning storm
contain winds of a hundred sixty miles an hour
image spa glassy hotels tennis courts golf courses pools
may be women crying in closets men bellowing in bathtubs
contain shorn roofs shattered windows severed balconies
image smashed furniture luggage clothing strewn over the beach
may be unresponsive cops crowds attacking stores gray smoke
contain hulls of buildings looters lifting televisions
image light yachts crushed in port dark lines seeking water
may be stiff bodies propping up the cracked walls of buildings
contain the cosmos which may contain a screen which may contain
an image which contains nothing proves nothing signifies nothing
for the algorithm in the background which keeps watch observes tallies
water air
air light
light water
Marta Eloy Cichocka (Cracow) – Polish poet and photographer, Iberian Studies scholar and a Francophile, literary investigator and translator (from Jean Baptise Racine and Pedro Calderón de la Barca to Roberto Juarroz, Pablo Neruda and Raúl Zurita, among others). Laureate of the 1st prize in Halina Poświatowska National Poetry Competition (2004), the 1st International SxS Antonio Machado Scholarship-Residence (2016) and the UNESCO Krakow City of Literature Prize (2021). She has published seven poetry books as well as two books on literary theory of contemporary historical novel, in French and in Spanish. She is the author of the bilingual libretto of the play “Hijas del aire. Dream of Balladyna. Córki powietrza. Sen Balladyny”, directed by Ignacio García (Teatr Jan Kochanowski, Opole – Almagro International Classical Theatre Festival, 2019). She also coordinates REPUBLICA POETICA (multilingual poetry readings) and MANUFACTURA DE POESÍA (translation workshops). She is an Associate Professor of the University of National Education Comission in Cracow.
Karen Kovacik has published translations of contemporary Polish poetry in many journals, including American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Poetry East, West Branch, Mid-American Review, Poetry Southern Review, Trafika Europe, Two Lines, and World Literature Today. In 2011 and 2018, she was awarded a fellowship in literary translation from the National Endowment for the Arts, and she’s the translator most recently of Jacek Dehnel’s Aperture, a finalist for the 2019 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. She’s also the editor of Scattering the Dark, an anthology of Polish women poets (White Pine, 2016). With Mira Rosenthal and Antonia Lloyd-Jones, she is translator of poems in Krystyna Dąbrowska’s collection Tideline, published by Zephyr in, 2022, which is a finalist for the Derek Walcott Prize and has been longlisted for the National Translation Award. Also a poet, she’s the author of the collections Portable City (forthcoming in 2025), Metropolis Burning and Beyond the Velvet Curtain. She was Indiana’s Poet Laureate from 2012-2
